Magma’s 2026 pamphlet competition: Winner announced!

We are absolutely delighted to announce that ‘I wove my love an overcoat’ by Peter Julian Taylor is the winner of Magma’s 2026 pamphlet competition! Many congratulations to him.

Our judge Marjorie Lotfi says: “Each poem in this pamphlet sings with language that’s both spare on the page and rich in meaning. I’ve returned to this body of work over and over, flipping from the final turning away in the poem Murmuration to the opening Thirty-three names for nature, not wanting the poetic spell to break.

“These poems are musical in their rhyme, careful in their form on the page, and unfold with such grace and apparent ease that the reader almost misses the heavy subjects they sometimes contain: love, loss, loneliness, leaving home and returning, and the fleeting nature of each moment in life.

“While there were so many beautiful and accomplished poems in the shortlist, I chose this pamphlet as the winner because it was the one I returned to most often for sheer joy, even reading the poems aloud for the sound of them in my mouth, surprised at what new wisdom they could reveal. To me, they gracefully do the hardest kind of poetic work: giving the complexity of our lives a kind of levity, clarity and beauty.”

Peter’s reaction: “What an absolute honour to be recognised in this way, both by Magma and by the award-winning Marjorie Lotfi as judge. Being selected for publication is exciting and so inspiring for me – a huge motivation to keep drafting, crafting and enjoying language. Thank you to all – and very well done to the other shortlisted poets.”

Magma will publish the pamphlet in 2027 – watch out for further news.

Peter Julian Taylor lives in Cheshire and works as an editor. His poems have appeared in PN Review, The Rialto, MODRON, Cambridge Poetry and Lucent Dreaming, plus anthologies from the 1-2-3, Candlestick, and Wee Sparrow presses. He has been shortlisted for the Ginkgo/AONB ‘Best Poem of UK Landscape’, longlisted for The Rialto/RSPB ‘Nature and Place’ Prize, and twice highly commended in the Wales Poetry Award.

Scroll down for a poem from the pamphlet. We’ll publish a poem from the pamphlet in the spring issue of Magma, along with poems from three other shortlisted entries.

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Thirty-three names for nature
by Peter Julian Taylor

Earthgift, sunblessing, something-in-the-park,
of birth and death, hedge-dressing, Edenporn,
your Adam’s apple, fur and feather, lark
ascending, scatter-good-seed, weather-worn,

treetalk, the rose of promise, meadowspread,
antithesis-of-prose, the pollenbomb,
a sort of slaughterhouse, the thunderhead,
a sense of season, soil-song, a robin from

the afterlife. Leafmonger, blossom-snatcher,
trillion-year-old mother with a further
billion children due, the infidel,

wild west, a beetlefest, the nest-egg hatcher,
seed-bank benefactor, faunafather,
soul recycler, hymn to green, Immanuel.

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